The Bench (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Richard Rive
- First Published: 1963
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The mid-twentieth century
- Setting: Cape Town, South Africa
- Principal Characters: Karlie
- Genres: Social realism, Short fiction
- Subjects: Segregation or integration, Police, Protests or demonstrations, Rural or country life, Working class, Trains, South Africa or South Africans, Speeches, Apartheid
- Locales: Cape Town, South Africa
The Story
After Karlie has lived all of his life in a remote rural part of South Africa, this is his first visit to Cape Town, a bustling metropolis in which all sorts of people rub shoulders. More obviously than in his more segregated home town, Cape Town shows the tensions that result from the rigid system of separation of races known as apartheid. Karlie sees people of all colors—some black, some white, and others mixed.
As the story opens, Karlie is standing in a large crowd that is listening to a black speaker who is proclaiming the rights of black majority, the...
[The entire page is 1429 words long]
